Peak cheap oil is an incontrovertible fact

Brent crude jumped to $115 a barrel last week. Petrol costs in Germany and across much of Europe are now at record levels in local currencies.

Diesel is above the political pain threshold of $4 a gallon in the US, hence reports circulating last week that the International Energy Agency (IEA) is preparing to release strategic reserves.

Barclays Capital expects a “monster” effect this quarter as the crude market tightens by 2.4m barrels a day (bpd), with little extra supply in sight.

Goldman Sachs said the industry is chronically incapable of meeting global needs. “It is only a matter of time before inventories and OPEC spare capacity become effectively exhausted, requiring higher oil prices to restrain demand,” said its oil guru David Greely.

3. A lot of people have run away from the peak oil theory, ...

I, have modified my beliefs of how the consequences of peak oil would unfold. Like many I had read Colin Campbell and Simmons in the late 90's and early 2000's, and I even wrote a few letters to the editors in 2002 - 2003 and tried to plant thoughts of concern in the minds of others. As early as the early 90's I was aware of the general theory as presented by the Hubbert peak.

Most all the early researchers concentrated on the impact on economies and as a result, societies, when peak oil was realized. Everyone was counting barrels of oil used daily, reserves, natural gas pre fracking reserves, coal supplies; and most were in agreement. When oil and other fossil fuels peaked, the economic struggle for nation states and their economies would lead to severe stresses. Some inferred a future of total chaos and catastrophic breakdown of infra structures and social unrest. There was much debate of just when the oil/natural gas peak would occur, and how long afterward the effects would be realized.

Many presentations on peak oil were reasonable, but were incomplete assessments, of the overall situation. Few realized, and none that I am aware of heralded, that the real peak in hydrocarbons would not be realized in reserves but rather in the 'safe' level of saturation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere; before catastrophic climate change would be unavoidable. That the atmospheric greenhouse gasses have a time bomb effect and do not have an immediate impact, was until recently, an unknown phenomenon to many peak oil researchers.

Peaking hydrocarbons has indeed set us on a course of chaos and instability, not for the quantity of reserves, but rather the quantity and pace they were used.

I think in retrospect many will discover, the 'environmentally safe' hydrocarbon use, peaked near 1980. Before the one family earner became two or three, before everybody needed their own car, before the great migration to suburbia; and as the political will for mass transit faded from debate. About the time the Carter administration was politically emasculated for funding alternate forms of energy, and a few thinkers like F Buckminster Fuller lamented on an energy 'crisis of ignorance', was near the time when a new road traveled would have led to an enduring future.

Those who distance themselves now from the peak oil - hydrocarbons - theory, do so from little thought. It is the peak of hydrocarbons that has caused a future to be filled with crisis, though not for the presumed economics of dwindling reserve quantities, but rather the atmospheric saturation of their waste by products, used thirty or more years ago.